Coenzyme Q10, which is referred to as ubiquinone or ubidecarenone and is a poorly water-soluble drug and a physiologically active substance, is known to not only have biological activity as a kind of coenzyme, but also play an important role in ATP production by being located in the electron transport system of the mitochondria, which is an intracellular energy producing organ, and it is widely distributed in the human body to reduce blood glucose by converting sugar to energy, and like vitamin E, it acts as an antioxidant, preventing cell membranes from being oxidized and increasing an oxygen utilization rate.
Coenzyme Q10 has been reported to protect cells from harmful oxygen and have an excellent effect as an antioxidant that helps the activity of vitamin E with an antioxidant function, thereby having antioxidant function-induced effects such as anti-cancer prevention, aging prevention, and blood low density lipoprotein (LDL) oxidation inhibition, and is also known to have an effect as an adjuvant on cardiovascular diseases such as congestive heart failure, angina pectoris, hypertension, heart disease, and the like. In addition, according to a clinical trial report, coenzyme Q10 delays functional degradation in various neurodegenerative diseases such as Huntington' disease, Friedreich's ataxia, especially in Parkinson's disease. In addition, coenzyme Q10 also has an effect of alleviating rheumatic valve diseases and alveolar inflammation through immune function enhancement, and has been developed as drugs due to the above-described various effects. In particular, it has recently been possible to use coenzyme Q10 in health functional foods, and thus usefulness thereof is increasing.
However, coenzyme Q10 has problems such as very low versatility thereof in the use in a drug, a health functional food, or a food because coenzyme Q10 is a poorly water-soluble substance with a very low solubility in water, and to address the problem that applications of coenzyme Q10 to a water-soluble liquid such as beverages are particularly highly limited, coenzyme Q10 is dissolved in a hydrophobic lipid such as an omega-3 fatty acid for oral administration, but has low bioavailability.
Poorly water-soluble drugs refer to drugs that are not readily soluble in water due to inclusion of a structurally hydrophobic part of a compound, and there are many cases in which the practical use of poorly water-soluble drugs is limited due to poor water solubility thereof. For example, approximately 41% or more of drugs developed as new drugs are abandoned in the middle of development due to poor water solubility thereof, and about one third or more of the drugs listed in the US Pharmacopeia are classified as poorly water-soluble drugs.
To use these poorly water-soluble drugs, it is required that additional materials for addressing the poor water solubility be added, but many cases in which the use of poorly water-soluble drugs is limited due to the toxicity of added materials have been reported. For example, generally, to solubilize a poorly water-soluble material, emulsification using an emulsifying agent, capturing using liposomes, and the like are widely used, but the use thereof is limited due to introduction of foreign substances not originating from the human body, physical instability, and the like.
Thus, to apply coenzyme Q10 to drugs, food, and cosmetics, it is necessary to make an effort to maintain a homogeneous aqueous solution state by preventing degeneration according to temperature, storage location, and duration and securing long-term stability, and since this process should be performed without using excessively large amounts of an emulsifying agent, a stabilizer, and an excipient, it requires more enhanced stability.
Due to the characteristics of coenzyme Q10, many studies (Korean Patent Registration No. 10-0871050) have been carried out on solubilization in water or enhancement of bioavailability to apply coenzyme Q10 to beverages and drugs, but no remarkable achievements have not been made.